A garden is a vessel. Stories play out at different scales of time and space. Memories become things we touch, smell, see, and hear. A garden is a gift we give, and one that gives back—a microcosm of a familiar wild our bodies long for.

It is a fantastical juxtaposition of things that shouldn’t work together, yet somehow do. A kumquat plucked on a spring day. A hummingbird kissing chaparral honeysuckle outside the kitchen window. A mosaic of human hands in soil and windswept tree limbs. Springtime salvia blooms becoming next winter’s mulch.

These potentials, coexisting and challenging one another, live quietly in every corner of our lives. They are dances waiting to be choreographed, paths waiting to be revealed.

A garden is not a finished thing—it is a question we ask together, and an answer that changes with the seasons.

I'm AJ--a landscape designer with more than five years of experience in residential garden-making. I was born in Redondo Beach, CA, and grew up between there; Auckland, New Zealand; Miami Beach, Florida; and New York City. I have dual degrees in Urban and Regional Studies and Landscape Architecture from Cornell University. I don't have my own garden (yet) but I am kept busy by my 30 houseplants and living vicariously through the outdoor spaces of others.